


Two Weeks in June

by enigmaticdr



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pregnancy, tw: miscarriage, tw: pregnancy loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 20:26:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11471061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticdr/pseuds/enigmaticdr
Summary: Scully must cope with an unbearable hardship.





	Two Weeks in June

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt from an anon on Tumblr. This turned pretty angsty pretty quick - please take heed of the tags. It’s also written for Leiascully‘s xf writing challenge prompts “Resentment” and “Forgiveness”.

Five months after they settle into their rural Virginia home, Mulder walks into a Walmart pharmacy and buys a pregnancy test. **  
**

Later that evening, as though it were now the only object separating herself from her future, Scully stares intermittently between the small box resting on the white sheets and Mulder’s equally ashen face. Silence reigns king, making even their breathing seem hollow. 

Finally, she removes the slender device from its packaging and smooths out the folded instructions against the night table. She glances over them before inhaling stiffly and stuffing the paper back into the box. She takes the test and its packaging and retreats alone to the bathroom, angles the door so that from where he is standing, Mulder can’t see what she is doing.

Silence extends its icy fingers across every cornice, long and hollow yet thick like the air before an August thunderstorm. Minutes pass before he hears her rinse off her hands. He looks up to see her standing in front of the mirror, still as a stone. 

Her face is utterly ruined.

What happens next sets Mulder completely off balance, makes him realize that he actually has no insight into her thoughts at all. She drops the pregnancy test into the sink, and gazes point-blank at the mirror. She leans forward to get her face within a foot of the glass, and whispers harshly:  _Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you_ , face pale as the cream coloured walls.

She is looking through herself to some other side of the mirror, and before her eyes glaze over in tears, they share this terrible moment, a moment that casts them both as performers and audience. 

* * *

“It’s okay, Scully.” And it’s the first thing that’s been said in hours.  

She looks at him from across the kitchen table. Her expression is not one of recognition of his solidarity. It is something else, not of comfort, but of complete exhaustion. The clock  _tick, tick, ticks._  

She stares at her hands, folded atop the wooden table. She inhales and speaks: “Listen closely because I’m going to say this once, Mulder. You haven’t earned your right to an opinion in this. You have no idea what I feel.”

He swallows harshly and nods. He would write those lines of her thoughts, which come so easily to him despite how little they actually say to each other. But then she blinks, and the window to her soul closes with a soft thud and he is blind. She is right; he doesn’t know what she thinks as she stares blankly out the window.

* * *

The pregnancy test infuses Scully with awful energy, has her avoiding mirrors and shop-window reflections, has her pouring scalding water over her skin. It has her angry, has her blaming him, blaming herself, blaming God. Some days she is sure Mulder will slip from her fingertips, will have had enough of her, will up and go in the middle of the night while she sleeps. 

* * *

Two weeks later, something changes. When she comes home from work, Scully rushes through the front door and listens for sounds of Mulder in the house. She pushes into the downstairs bathroom and stands above the toilet, looking down into the basin of water, leans a little forward, hands on her thighs. She takes a number of deep breaths to dispel the aching cramps. The current wave of pain in her belly passes, and turns and sits, pants pulled down, on the seat. She sees red against the white cotton. Scully tips her head back and stares at the neutral territory of the ceiling instead. She just sits and waits. More deep deliberate breaths as another cramp seizes her.

Some part of her mind, the physician part of her, whispers statistics and things like  _age and stress and anxiety_  and Scully knows, once and for all, that she was never meant to keep a child. She feels like she is outside herself, strangely unfeeling, strangely apathetic, like her mind has closed itself off to emotion.

She takes a photograph out of her pocket, creased in four places from being folded and refolded, and just feels the material with her fingers, caresses her index over the soft baby-chick fuzz of William’s hair, his smiling face.  

She hunches over, resting her face in her hands. The floorboards above her head creak softly and a door somewhere above opens and closes. He has realized she’s home, has seen the car, is waiting to ask her about her day and about plans for supper. She has, perhaps, seven or so minutes to rest before he will come looking.

Surely enough, long minutes later he knocks gently with one knuckle on the bathroom door. “Scully?” he asks, voice slightly muted through the wooden door, “You okay?”

“Mulder,” she says quietly, taking a deep breath. “…Come sit with me.”

He opens the door and takes in her image, curled on the toilet with her pants kicked aside. She opens her mouth to explain but no sound comes out, so she just stares at him, standing there in the doorway with his ruffled hair and his t-shirt. She notices he’s got a pasta sauce stain on the collar. She thinks maybe her brain isn’t processing right.

He meets her gaze and quickly realizes the truth of it, gently closes the door behind him, locking them in the privacy of the small room. His eyes are so serious and his lips turn pale with worry, but he remains calm.

She holds her hand out to him and he takes it in his, coming to kneel down in front of her. She wraps her arms around his neck and hunches over, leaning her sweaty forehead on his shoulder and closing her eyes against the warmth of his skin.

His palms pass soothingly up and down her back beneath her shirt, rubbing softly, massaging away the waning tightness in her muscles, the ache that is already beginning to disappear.

Such a deceptively easy process for something that carries such a momentous meaning. So unbearably quick.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers softly, kissing the pointy bone of her shoulder. “I’ve got you.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading.


End file.
